As Ed Scannell reports, today’s big story is Novell’s acquisition of Ximian. Few Linux companies enjoy the cult status Ximian has earned from the developer community. Miguel de Icaza, Ximian’s CTO, has driven much of this success through leadership of projects like Gnome and mono.Novell no doubt hopes this glory will translate into enterprise sales. And that’s a theme we’ve come to expect at LinuxWorld Expo. As the San Francisco Chronicle observes today, the show’s success now hinges on catering for people in suits. But, as Scannell writes: “One of the keys to the deal is the Ximian Desktop 2 product, a complete Linux desktop environment that has an integrated suite of Linux desktop applications capable of supporting Windows file formats and networks.”A stronger client/server story will certainly help Novell. But what remains an open question is how many big suits really believe Linux belongs outside the consolidated data center. On that note, it will be interesting to see what happens to Sun and Ximian’s Star Office alliance. Paul Krill and I will be at the show tomorrow, so stay tuned for updates. Meanwhile, read our Linux Special Report here. Technology Industry